Sleep: The new health craze?

The last few decades have seen various wellness fads and health scares. Some topics that come to mind are sodium, cholesterol, saturated fats, trans fats, carbs, acai berry, bran, oats, whole grains, organic, jogging, yoga and yogurt. Maybe it’s time we focus on sleep as the key to health. After all we are a sleep deprived nation, with 50-70 million US adults having trouble sleeping. Two news articles today make me think it might be time for sleep to gain its due: Regular bedtimes help kids’ behavior reports on a study of 10,000 seven year old kids. Those who went to bed at a regular time had significantly fewer behavior problems than those who didn’t have a regular bedtime. The effects were reversible, too: kids who started going to bed at a regular time started acting better, and those who reverted to more variable timing got worse. Kids are one thing –and adults may not give that much attention to those little brats anyway– but when studies start linking sleep patterns with neurological decline, then people will take notice. Sleep takes out brain’s trash; buildup of refuse makes you sleepy offers a theory for why we sleep. According to a new study, all systems in the body build up waste products that need to be disposed of, but the brain is a bit different in how it deals with it. “The lymph system collects metabolites from tissues throughout the body and dumps them into the bloodstream, where they’re carried to the liver for...
Source: Health Business Blog - Category: Health Managers Authors: Tags: Culture Research sleep sleep patterns The brain Source Type: blogs